exploring civic engagement evaluationbuildingmovement.org/pdf/evidenceofchange_bmp.pdf · at civic...

To learn more about this initiative and the follow-up of this work, please contact us:

Trish Tchume at [email protected]

Building Movement Project | 220 Fifth Avenue, Fifth Floor | New York, NY 10001 T 212.633.1405 | F 212.633.2015

www.buildingmovement.org

Visit the websites of the Civic Engagement Evaluation Summit partners:

The Civic Engagement Evaluation Summit was funded through the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Connect Fund—www.wkkf.org—as part of the Civic Engagement Learning Year initiative.

Exploring Civic Engagement Evaluation

The Social Service and Social Change Series

Building Movement Project

Alliance for Children and Families

Ms. Foundation for Women

Center for Community Change


www.alliance1.org

www.ms.foundation.org

www.communitychange.org

Table of ConTenTs

Introduction 1

Civic Engagement Measurement and Impact Survey 1

Advancing the Conversation 2

Applying What We Learned: The Women Alive Case Study 6Shifting from Individual Outcomes to Civic Impact: Advice from Participants 7

Support Groups 7

Peer Health Educator Program 7

Role Model Stories 8

Implementing New Tools: Women Alive After the Summit 9

Next Steps 10

Endnotes 11

abouT The building MoveMenT ProjeCT

The goal of the Building Movement Project is to build a strong social justice ethos into the nonprofit sector, strengthen the role of nonprof-it organizations in the United States as sites of democratic practice, and promote nonprofit groups as partners in building a movement for progressive social change.

Many individuals in the nonprofit sector are strongly motivated by the desire to address in-justice and promote fairness, equality, and sus-tainability. The Building Movement Project sup-ports nonprofit organizations in working toward social change by integrating movement-build-ing strategies into their daily work.

To accomplish its goals, the Building Movement Project makes use of four core strategies:

Changing the discourse and practice with- »in the nonprofit sector to endorse social change and social justice values.

Identifying and working with social service »organizations as sites for social change activities in which staff and constituencies can be engaged to participate in move-ment building.

Supporting young leaders who bring new »ideas and energy to social change work.

Listening to and engaging people who »work in social change organizations—es-pecially grassroots and community-based groups—to strengthen their ability to shape the policies that affect their work and the communities they serve.

1Exploring CiviC EngagEmEnt Evaluation

For the past several years, the Building Move-ment Project, the Alliance for Children and Families and the Ms. Foundation for Wom-en have worked with their individual networks to promote civic engagement as a way to en-hance services, create strong communities, and promote progressive social change. As a result of these efforts, many thousands of constituents across the nation are engaging with their communities in new ways and an in-creasing number of service providers contin-ue to ask how to incorporate meaningful so-cial change into their organizations. Howev-er, one of the common concerns identified by providers is their ability to show the impact of this work.

Social change activities are not easily quan-tifiable and it can be difficult to navigate and keep up with emerging evaluation methods. In many cases, not knowing how to demon-

strate results has hindered service providers from adopting social change activities and has prevented them from receiving funding for this work. The Building Movement Project, the Alliance and the Ms. Foundation, came to-gether to draw on their collective experience with their networks and respond to this call for methods and tools for measuring the impact of social change work.

This report offers a look into how organiza-tions currently view their relationship with im-pact measurement. It then presents a brief summary of the key findings that came out of the Civic Engagement Evaluation Summit con-vened by the partner organizations and ends with a set of recommendations for how to in-crease the nonprofit sector’s capacity to re-spond to the increasing need for tools to mea-sure the impact of civic engagement and so-cial change work.

inTroduCTion

Building Movement, the Alliance and the Ms. Foundation were all part of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Civic Engagement Learning Year in 2008. As part of the project, groups who formed partnerships were eligible for small Connect Grants. The three groups received a grant to hold a summit with practitioners, re-searches, intermediaries and funders to look at civic engagement impact measurement and dialogue with other organizations.

To plan for the summit and to add an analyti-cal foundation to their work, the partners sur-veyed individuals at a range of organizations, foundations and academic institutions work-ing in civic engagement and social change. The survey asked about the need to create di-alogue across groups doing this work, which voices should be involved in the conversation,

how civic engagement or social change was defined in their work, what challenges they confronted and which strategies they current-ly used to assess impact and outcomes.

The survey revealed the following:

A wide umbrella for civic engagement and social change work. The organizations sur-veyed were working with multiple definitions of civic engagement and indicators of so-cial change. These ranged from specific be-haviors associated with civic participation to shifts in systems and institutional structures. In some organizations, social change work in-cluded programs or services that engaged in-dividuals in skill-building that would allow them to advocate for their own needs and the needs of their family—further broadening the realm

CiviC engageMenT MeasureMenT and iMPaCT survey

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of possible areas of impact. [See “Defining Civic Engagement & Social Change”, p. 3, for a detailed list of survey responses.]

Difficult but not insurmountable challeng-es in measuring outcomes and impacts. While the responses reflected a deep commit-ment to doing social change work, there were a number of significant challenges that groups associated with measuring impacts. These in-cluded the challenge of defining civic engage-ment and social change (see above), identi-fying “the wins” associated with complex ini-tiatives, and meeting the demands of an out-come evaluation climate that seeks immediate and generalizable results from initiatives that are non-linear and multifaceted. [See “Chal-lenges of Civic Engagement Evaluation”, p. 5, as defined by respondents.]

A need for multiple perspectives to inform tools and designs. The survey tapped the need to have nontraditional “experts” at the table to discuss evaluation and tools. Respon-dents identified the input of service providers, foundations and evaluators as equally crucial to this dialogue. To a lesser extent, community members and IT professionals were also be-lieved to be necessary to advance this work. Respondents were interested in the views of groups that were involved in advocacy, com-munity organizing, human service provision, and leadership development.

This information was used to frame the Civic Engagement Evaluation Summit as a cross-sector learning opportunity that would com-bine innovative methods, ideas, practitioners and thought leaders.

The Civic Engagement Evaluation Summit took place in March 2009 in Santa Ana Pueb-lo, New Mexico and included a day and half of structured conversations among 28 par-ticipants representing the nonprofit service community, funders, evaluators of civic en-gagement, advocacy, policy and other social change initiatives. [See “Participants”, p. 6, for full attendee list.]

The agenda that emerged from the planning process focused on the needs and challeng-es of the nonprofit service sector but also ex-plored other nonprofit social change initia-tives affiliated with participating organizations. There was an emphasis on utilizing the exper-tise of attendees, presenting multiple perspec-tives, and a focus on uniting thinking rather than creating divisions. Most important, plan-ners sought to advance the following goals:

To move the dialogue around civic en- »gagement measurement towards a framework that reflects the complexity and broader impact of this work;

To share powerful, practical tools for mea- »suring the impact and outcomes of civic engagement and social change work;

To share models for effective collabora- »tions between foundation staff, evalua-tors and practitioners; and

To develop a common understanding of »future directions in measuring the impact and outcomes of civic engagement.

The Summit planners were conscious about holding a gathering that would value the con-tributions of all participants and promote open exchange. To create this space, a fourth part-ner was brought in from the Center for Com-munity Change (CCC)—a group that focus-es on building power and capacity of margin-alized populations to change their communi-

advanCing The ConversaTion


Social service agencies and other non profits work with constituents to strengthen their voices �and support efforts to engage in social change/community development activities. We work to enhance the capacity of the agency (a family resource center) to address systemic problems through social change work within the context of their usual services and activities.

Action by individuals or organizations that both strengthens our democratic institutions and �encourages public involvement in civic life—with priority given to work in communities that have been historically underrepresented in our democratic process.

Grantmakers seek to support improvements to society for a variety of reasons (improved edu- �cation, improved employment opportunities; reduction of poverty, etc.). No matter the reason, it is still an attempt to achieve “social change”. A key approach to such change is effective-ly engaging those most involved and affected—i.e., “civic engagement”. Civic engagement is empowering community members to be involved in their own improvement, whether it be vot-ing, donating, volunteering or advocating for change.

Our program views Charity/Social Service as the temporary and immediate relief for the op- �pression of women of color who are taught to believe that they do not have the right to speak for themselves. Internalized and institutionalized racism and stigma keeps women of color away from participating in HIV planning, advocacy, and coalition building that adversely im-pact their lives. Thereby contributing to women not feeling entitled to have opinions about poli-cies that directly affect them. Our vision for Social Change requires that we motivate a diverse group of constituents to share in the responsibility of promoting he-alth education, advocat-ing for inclusiveness in the HIV planning process, and demanding justice so that HIV disease does not continue to crush disenfranchised communities through stigma, systematic oppres-sion, and institutional racism and gender biases.

Given my university location: civic engagement means active involvement on the part of stu- �dents, faculty or the university as a whole in actions related to the public good; I personally also promote such involvement in partnership or dialogue with other constituents outside the university. Social change is an alternation, even on a small level, in the conditions affecting some group within a society.

Electoral engagement. �

Developing youth leaders who can have an impact on their local community and beyond. �

We think of it as 1) focused grassroots and legislative action on specific policy issues of con- �cern to our constituents, in a manner that 2) strengthens and grows a base of individuals and groups capable of taking grassroots and legislative action on “the next issue” once short-term policy objectives have been achieved.

We agreed that four elements recur in the course of most social movements. These pieces �of work are: to develop values, generate opposition to institutional and structural racism, cre-ate shifts in the political climate and culture and institutionalize solutions. These can appear to be linear, but actually operate in an iterative dynamic that grows in scale over time (with good strategy). Even when we are clear about these elements, however, social change is an unpre-dictable process that requires tactical flexibility, even within a clear overarching strategy.

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ties and affect public policy—to help shape and facilitate the agenda. Together, the four partners developed an agenda that included two sessions and an evening presentation/discussion on Day 1 while the next morning was devoted to a case study where different evaluation methods could be applied.

The first session on How Evaluation Works (and Doesn’t Work) for Social and Human Service Organizations was designed to ex-plore the various ways that evaluation can be integrated into and tailored to an organization’s work. The three-member panel discussed the strengths and challenges of the models used within and promoted by each of their organi-zations. Nicole Robinson, an Evaluation and Organizational Development Specialist from Mosaica1, for example, offered an integrated approach in which evaluation is conducted from within the organization by a staff evalua-tor. Ehren Reed, a Senior Associate with the Innovation Network2, spoke to an evaluation model in which an outside evaluator is embed-ded within the organization for a period, but maintains some distance from programming and services. The panel was rounded out by Greg Crowley, Vice President of Program De-velopment and Evaluation for the Coro Center for Civic Leadership3, who shared his experi-ence and insights based on their developmen-tal evaluation model in which an outside eval-uator works with the provider to develop tools and measures for impact that can be used long after the evaluator leaves the site.

Varied Outcomes of Civic Engagement, the second session, was designed to highlight how evaluation models can capture the vari-ous levels of impact—individual, organization-al and societal—that can be elicited by civic engagement and social change work. In this case, four panelists offered their perspectives. Laura Pinsoneault, Consultant for the Alliance for Children and Families4, presented both the Theory of Change and the tailored evalua-tion tool used by their agencies to measure impacts of their civic engagement initiatives in the context of their service provision. Bo

Thao, Director of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy’s (AAPIP)5 BRIDGE Program, presented participants with the Anatomy of a Social Justice Organization—a creative framework for evaluating an organi-zation’s capacity to work for social justice at the individual, organizational, and societal lev-els. Shep Zeldin, Co-Director of the Center for Nonprofit Leadership at the University of Wis-consin-Madison6, pointed towards one orga-nization’s incorporation of youth-adult partner-ships as evidence of change. Finally, Jackie Williams Kaye, Strategic Learning and Evalua-tion Executive for the Atlantic Philanthropies7, spoke to the value of demonstrating impact at all levels as evidenced by Atlantic’s fund-ing support of both promising new evaluation models and the field of evaluation in gener-al. The conversation with the audience during the session underscored the need to integrate these frameworks in ways that reflected differ-ent organizations’ missions and made the im-pact of their work more evident to funders.

The first day ended with a dinner presentation, Making Connections: Framework, Tools for Action, Documentation and Case Mak-ing where Audrey Jordon from the Annie E. Casey Foundation presented their framework when evaluating the community impact of their work with residents. The Honeycomb Model is built upon what Casey calls “Authentic De-mand” 8 by residents for developmental, orga-nizational and societal outcomes, emphasiz-ing the critical role community members play in social change work and the need to docu-ment their impact.


The challenge is that traditional evaluation techniques work well in assessing linear process- �es, however, the impact of civic engagement is not linear. Community residents live in a web and as individuals become more civically engaged, the outcome and impact of their behavior is difficult to track. A person who joins a community group and develops as a leader does not just use the new skills in that organization. These skills are applied and passed on to others within the community along the lines of the web. To fully assess the impact we would need to have detailed knowledge of the web and the web is constantly evolving. The challenge is to be able to track changes in the web that can be attributed to a specific set of actions.

Challenges I have found which may also apply to civic engagement and and/or social change �center on the fundamental tension between defining individual, community, and programmat-ic impacts. What does civic engagement look like beyond voting patterns, number of hours spent volunteering, and/or government participation (running for office, public advocacy, cam-paigning, for example). With respect to social change, the challenge of identifying specific be-haviors that indicate authentic change in a context.

The major challenges in evaluating this type of work have been the complexities inherent to �advocacy and policy change efforts: the long timeframes, the multitude of players, the oppo-sition, the political climate, etc. These complexities make it difficult to parse out the outcomes attributable to one single advocate.

We rely on evidence derived from single or multiple case studies. On the positive side, case �studies give us in-depth understanding of mechanisms that bring about or prevent desired outcomes. On the negative side, the small number of cases makes it harder to generalize

People use the words civic engagement, social change, and prevention, but when you begin �to dig down deeper you often discover that they are simply describing some aspect of service delivery. This makes it challenging to get accurate data regarding people’s actual involvement in social change work and civic engagement.

Identification of control groups that can be removed from programs to measure their impact �that do not create a burden on the organization or program in question.

Measuring outcomes in civic engagement and social change work requires a significant cul- �tural shift within organizations to do work in a very focused, disciplined fashion. It has been and continues to be a challenge to get organizations to embrace the necessary strategic fo-cus and planning to determine measurable outcomes and impact of the work.

There are not really existing tools that measure social change work of organizations. Most �tools are purely focused on traditional organizational development.

As a grantmaker—I see the central challenges in measuring outcome and impacts are three �fold. First, clearly defining the desired change, second lack of tools or systems track the data and, third, time. Most of the social change is years in the making and yet the time horizon for evaluation is shorter than that.

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Barbara Schaffer Baconanimating democracy, ameri-cans for the arts

Gigi Barsoumthe California Endowment

Carrie Broaduslos angeles’ Women alive Co-alition

Margaret CamarenaSocial Science research Cen-ter/old dominion university

Julia CoffmanEvaluation Consultant

Greg CrowleyCoro Center for Civic leadership

Ryan FriedrichsState voices

A. Caroline Hotalingms. foundation for Women

Helena Huangfunders’ Committee on Civic participation

Tammy Johnsonapplied research Center

Terri JohnsonJane addams hull house

Audrey JordanTom Kellyannie E. Casey foundation

Scherazade Daruvalla Kingproject: think different and Em-powerment records

Pam Korzaanimating democracy ameri-cans for the arts

Frances KunreutherTrish TchumeBuilding movement project

Linda NguyenLaura Pinsoneaultalliance for Children and fami-lies

Bill OswaldSpringfield College

Teresa Purcellpurcell public affairs

Ehren Reedinnovation network

Nicole Robinsonmosaica: the Center for non-profit Development and Plural-ism

Bo ThaoAsian Americans/Pacific Island-ers in philanthropy

Sean Thomas-BreitfeldCenter for Community Change

John Everett Tillfamily & Children’s Service

Jackie Williams Kayethe atlantic philanthropies

Shep ZeldinCenter for Non-Profits, Universi-ty of Wisconsin-madison

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aPPlying WhaT We learned: The WoMen alive Case sTudy

The gathering culminated on the second day with a session designed to apply the mod-els and frameworks that had been presented at the conference to a case study. The case study organization—Women Alive—is a coali-tion of, by and for women living with HIV/AIDS in the Los Angeles area. The organization be-gan as a support group for HIV-positive wom-en and has expanded to include a wide vari-ety of programs and services. Although Wom-en Alive members and activists have been on the forefront of AIDS policy issues—including advocacy for HIV clinical research specific to women and fighting to ensure that women have equal access to high quality, life-saving care and treatment—there has been no for-mal assessment of the impact of their work.

This is the context which Carrie Broadus, Ex-ecutive Director of Women Alive, offered the Summit participants when the case study was presented. Summit participants were divided into three groups with a combination of foun-dation staff, service providers and evaluators/researchers and were facilitated by one of the expert evaluators in the room. Each small group was assigned the task of developing a framework for assessing the impact of one of three primary services areas at Women Alive: Support Groups, Peer Education, and Role Model Stories. The goal was to develop a plan that took into account the organization’s cur-rent capacity and would assist Women Alive in demonstrating not only the impact that en-gaging and supporting HIV positive women


had on empowering women to advocate for themselves and manage their own treatment, but also the effect of their activities on efforts by the community to stop the spread of HIV.

Shifting from Individual Outcomes to Civic Impact: Advice from Participants

Women Alive was chosen in part because it already had tools in place to measure the in-dividual outcomes of service provision. Thus, the charge of the Summit group was to broad-en the evaluation focus of each service pro-gram area from individual outcomes to include civic impact as well.

Support Groups

Women Alive Support Groups use the sup-port of and between HIV positive women to improve health outcomes for participants and engage these women in their community. Particularly geared to women of color living with HIV/AIDS and their children, the Support Groups provide a safe environment to express emotions and to ask for information, ultimately helping to reshape the ways women view their experience and value to the community.

Women Alive tracks attendance, treatment plans and keeps progress notes to document medical outcomes, risk behaviors, and will-ingness of clients to self disclose their status publicly.

Summit attendees advised extending the im-pact of Support Groups by asking women to take a proactive stance in identifying how they expected group support to help them find their power in the community and organization. Specifically Summit attendees recommend-ed:

A » participatory evaluation design that al-lowed women attending Support Groups to determine criteria of success. This type of design is both reasonable in terms of

scope and cost for an organization like Women Alive and directly links the orga-nization’s service goals to impact.

Questions to guide the development of »the evaluation that include a closer ex-amination of the following:

Recruitment—who and why•

Sustainability—who, why and for how • long

Process—what is working/not working•

Effectiveness—what are the benefits • and who benefits

Data collection methods that demon- »strate impact in meaningful ways, and are accessible and understandable to partic-ipants. These might include photo jour-nals, written journals and presentations.

Alignment of evaluation with the Annie E. »Casey Foundation’s Authentic Demand model that emphasizes resident leader-ship, community organizing, civic partic-ipation and social networks as a frame-work for change.

Peer Health Educator Program

The Peer Health Educator Program trains volunteer members of Women Alive in com-munity health education, prevention, domestic violence and outreach to increase awareness of HIV and the importance of prevention and testing. The program also aims to increase support and services for people living with HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles County. Peer health educators share their knowledge and experi-ence through health fairs, home visits and oth-er outreach encounters.

The Peer Health Educator program transitions women living with HIV from “client” to volun-teer by developing knowledge and leadership skills that the women can then take into the community. The recommendations to Wom-en Alive suggested they look beyond demon-strating reach by counting participation, atten-

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dance and lengths of encounters, to learning more about the education process in order to assess which messages work with which re-cipients, and what happens as a result of the messages.

Specifically Summit attendees recommend-ed:

Developing a menu of questions for vari- »ous audiences that ask what is most im-portant to know today concerning HIV risks and transmission. Asking this ques-tion at each outreach opportunity keeps Women Alive current on the needs and issues relevant to the community they serve.

Identifying and documenting a clear mod- »el of engagement that responds to the following:

What is the overall environment in • which the interaction takes place and how does the environment impact the type and effectiveness of the mes-sage?

Who is the recipient of education • and how does the message need to change?

What is the end message and how • does this impact the recipient of this message?

In asking these questions, Women Alive can demonstrate the clear impact of Peer Health Education and use this in-formation to strengthen messages to different audiences.

Adopting a longitudinal strategy that fol- »lows up on (1) the impact of the experi-ence on the Peer Health Educators, (2) how the Educators’ messages at differ-ent outreach sites is received by recipi-ents, and (3) the difference in awareness at the community level.

Role Model Stories

Role Model Stories use first-person narra-tives by women committed to changing be-haviors to support their health and well-being. The printed stories are made available to busi-nesses throughout Los Angeles County and help to elevate the experience of HIV-positive women and highlight the importance of safe sex practices and condom use.

The Role Model Stories, with real time appeal, have both power and meaning for the wom-en of Women Alive. The current outcomes model counts the number of stories and the locations where they are being distributed—a model which could also be extended to cap-ture greater systemic impact.

Specifically Summit attendees recommend-ed:

Documenting the Theory of Change for »Role Model Stories by capturing the im-pact at multiple levels—storyteller, wom-en of Women Alive, business owners and consumers, broader community and po-litical movements.

Developing tools for linking data to tar- »gets (i.e. color coding of stories for spe-cific locations or areas of town, focus groups, tracking referrals and donations, on-going interviews with businesses and community members)

In addition to these program-specific recom-mendations, Summit participants also urged Broadus to use the many strengths and tools of Women Alive to draw in professional evalu-ators who might be interested in the organi-zation and its work as a subject for research. Women Alive has a leader who can commu-nicate with multiple audiences, clear group processes, tools and programs that serve as hubs for data collection. This is a solid climate for external evaluators to come in and work ef-fectively and efficiently to provide wider audi-ences with real data about the community and the impact of such initiatives.


Implementing New Tools: Women Alive After the Summit

At the request of several Summit attendees and in the interest of making social change work and impact measurement visible, the Building Movement Project followed up with Women Alive at the end of 2009, six months after this case study was presented at the Summit. Much had changed for Women Alive. The group had experienced a significant drop in funding and was mobilizing to meet the de-mands for their programs and services de-spite reduced capacity. As is often the case for organizations that lose resources, imple-menting impact evaluation became secondary to meeting the service demands and needs of the women they serve.

Although Women Alive’s capacity to imme-diately implement the evaluation frameworks developed at the Summit was limited, execu-tive director Broadus’s attendance at the meet-ing in March continues to shape and inform Women Alive as they move forward. Evidence of the framework that was developed at the

Summit appears in their current strategic plan. Broadus attributed much of her confidence in the survival of Women Alive to the energy and relationships that came from the Summit and seeing her passion shared by others. Those days at the Summit affirmed for her that her instincts were on target for Women Alive—they needed to focus at a structural level and they needed to demonstrate their impact.

In addition, the Summit helped Broadus en-hance her capacity to communicate her evalu-ation needs. As a result, she was able to pur-sue one of the stronger recommendations of the group and develop the language and tools needed to create a strong partnership with a professional evaluator. Broadus is the Co-Principal Investigator on a grant proposal be-ing submitted to support and evaluate the ser-vices of Women Alive. She sees the current success of this partnership stemming from her knowledge that the relationship between evaluation and organizational goals can be non-divisive and can actually contribute to the work of the organization.

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As a result of the Summit, the following next steps were identified as critical to advancing this work:

Create an informational hub for frame- »works, models and tools presented at the Summit. Summit attendees and pre-senters discussed and shared final and working drafts of tools and approaches for defining civic engagement and mea-suring the outcomes and impacts of this work in organizational settings. Many of these tools were found to be applicable in other arenas and could save time and ex-pense if they were made widely available to other practitioners and evaluators.

Create space for emerging methods. » Much of the discussion focused on how traditional methods of evaluation did not always apply to civic engagement and social change work. Several participants were working on innovative methods and approaches that reflected the impact of this work at multiple levels including cap-turing “outcomes in the moment” rath-er than the linear method of traditional evaluation. Presenters and others who were designing these new methods were anxious to hear feedback on their mod-els and to find places to test and expand their thinking. There was a strong desire to find places where new methods could be discussed, tested and modified with the help of other evaluators, practitioners, constituents and foundation partners.

Opportunities for more dialogue. » The lack of clarity and fragmentation of this type of evaluation was identified as one of the forces creating divisions between evaluators, service organizations and foundations. Finding ways to continue the conversation via electronic communica-tions and new collaborations were recog-nized as efficient and fundamental to ad-

vancing the impact of the Summit. At the same time, participants also expressed the need for more face-to-face time that allowed for opportunities to dialogue within and across sectors. The Summit attendees recognized that these types of meetings hold the power to change tradi-tional dynamics (i.e. the funder/practitio-ner divide), build relationships and steer impact and outcome evaluations in a con-structive direction.

Though it’s been less than a year since the Civic Engagement Evaluation Summit, huge strides in the work of many of our attendees offer encouragement that that the field has taken up the call for better tools for measuring the impact of civic engagement and increased access to existing tools. These developments include:

The launch of the » Center for Innovation in Evaluation directed by Summit par-ticipant, Julia Coffman, and described as a space “to push evaluation practice in new directions and into new arenas. The Center specializes in areas that are hard to measure and where conventional pro-gram evaluation approaches are not al-ways a good fit. This includes, for exam-ple, advocacy and policy change, com-munications, and systems change ef-forts. The Center works with other orga-nizations to develop and then share new ideas and solutions to evaluation chal-lenges through: Research, Communica-tions, Tool and training development, and Convening.”9 The Center is also a stra-tegic partner of the Innovation Network (Summit Participant, Ehren Reed) who continues to serve on the forefront of the field of advocacy evaluation.

Americans for the Arts » (Summit partic-ipants, Pam Korza and Barbara Schaef-fer-Bacon) recently launched IMPACT

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Arts—an online database for “those who want to make a difference in their com-munities through the arts and who want to understand what difference they’re making.”10 IMPACT Arts offers tools and suggestions for indicators but also offers a series of primers for groups entering into the realm of impact evalu-ation at different levels.

Asian Americans and Pacific Island- »ers in Philanthropy (AAPIP)’s Nation-al Gender Equity Campaign (Summit participant, Bo Thao) developed and re-leased its comprehensive BRIDGE Or-ganizational Assessment Tool. The Tool, which is currently meant for use mainly by the groups in AAPIP’s Organization-al Fellowship Program is designed to

1) provide each fellowship organization with a more holistic picture of areas of de-velopment; 2) uncover the organization’s internal assets, such as cultural compe-tence, reputation and role in the commu-nity; and 3) help the organization better reflect and understand its starting point as it considers what to focus on in terms of building “social justice capacity” so that it can more fully determine its path towards being a more effective and sus-tainable social justice organization.”11

The Building Movement Project is also com-mitted to responding to these recommenda-tions by continuing to serve as a convener, a hub for connecting practitioners with tools, and a champion for an increase in resources devoted to this field.

endnoTes

Mosaica is a multicultural and values–based nonprofit consulting organization headquartered in Washington, 1. DC. http://www.mosaica.org.

The Innovation Network is a nonprofit evaluation, research, and consulting firm. 2. http://www.innonet.org.

The Coro Center for Civic Leadership trains ethical, diverse civic leaders nationwide. http://www.coro.org.3.

The Alliance for Children and Families provides services to nonprofit child and family serving and economic 4. empowerment organizations. http://www.alliance1.org.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP) is a national philanthropy advocacy organiza-5. tion dedicated to advancing community and philanthropy. http://www.aapip.org.

The Center for Nonprofit Leadership at the University of Wisconsin-Madison builds capacity in civil society 6. and the nonprofit sector through the integration of education, research and outreach. http://www.sohe.wisc.edu/centers/cnp/index.html.

The Atlantic Philanthropies Strategic Learning and Evaluation efforts works with grantees to design evalua-7. tions that assess the implementation and the impact of projects. The range of evaluation designs and meth-ods used reflects the range of approaches grantees use to achieve their objectives. http://atlanticphilanthro-pies.org/news/evaluation.

Nilofer Ahsan, Sustaining Neighborhood Change, Rep, Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2008, 8. http://caseyfoundation.com/~/media/PublicationFiles/Authentic_guide_r14.pdf. (Date Accessed 11 Feb. 2010).

“Overview,” Center for Evaluation Innovation, http://www.innonet.org/index.php?section_id=2&content_9. id=722. (Date accessed 11 Feb 2010).

“Home Page,” IMPACT Arts, http://impact.animatingdemocracy.org. (Date accessed 11 Feb 2010). 10.

“BRIDGE Organizational Assessment Tool (BOAT),” National Gender and Equity Campaign, http://gen-11. derandequity.org/boat. (Date accessed 11 Feb 2010).

To learn more about this initiative and the follow-up of this work, please contact us:

Trish Tchume at [email protected]

Building Movement Project | 220 Fifth Avenue, Fifth Floor | New York, NY 10001 T 212.633.1405 | F 212.633.2015


Visit the websites of the Civic Engagement Evaluation Summit partners:

The Civic Engagement Evaluation Summit was funded through the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Connect Fund—www.wkkf.org—as part of the Civic Engagement Learning Year initiative.

Exploring Civic Engagement Evaluation

The Social Service and Social Change Series

Building Movement Project

Alliance for Children and Families

Ms. Foundation for Women

Center for Community Change


www.alliance1.org

www.ms.foundation.org

www.communitychange.org

exploring civic engagement evaluationbuildingmovement.org/pdf/evidenceofchange_bmp.pdf · at civic...

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